Melted, Singed, Incinerated, Saved: Traumatic Materialities of the Great Fire of London

我的项目通过研究1666年伦敦大火的物质文化来探索人类对物质灾难的体验。尽管大火在城市和国家叙事中占有突出地位，但这一事件，特别是幸存下来的碎片，在次要历史文献中仍然没有得到充分研究，在传统艺术史实践中被忽视。燃烧，粉碎，扭曲得面目全非，火灾影响的对象构成了一个重大的挑战，价值，美学的重要性，时间性，以及人文学科中的非人类行为者的机构的假设。 在物理灾难时期，当物体的外观、功能甚至存在发生变化时，我们的分析方法也必须改变。使用跨学科的方法，仔细地融合在一起的人类世和灾害研究与艺术历史视觉分析和美学的最新工作，这项研究问会发生什么，当我们转移到火的焦点的透镜不仅是一种破坏性的力量，但生成之一。通常以人类为中心的学科如何看待非人类演员，构建其“意图”并剖析其创造的“艺术”？该项目探讨了艺术与自然、缺席与在场、物质转化与毁灭之间的界限，提出了对历史灾难与经历灾难的社区之间关系的重新定义。

My project explores the human experience of physical catastrophe by examining the material culture of the 1666 Great Fire of London. Despite the Fire's prominence within city and national narratives, the event, and particularly the debris that survived it, remains understudied in secondary historical literature and overlooked in traditional art historical practice. Burnt, shattered, and warped beyond recognition, fire-affected objects pose a significant challenge to assumptions of value, aesthetic importance, temporality, and the agency of non-human actors within the humanities. In times of physical catastrophe, when the appearance, functionality and even existence of objects shifts, our methods of analysis must also change. Using an interdisciplinary approach that carefully blends together recent work in the Anthropocene and Disaster Studies with art historical visual analysis and aesthetics, this research asks what happens when we shift the lens of focus onto the Fire as not only a destructive force, but a generative one. How do disciplines that usually centre the human reckon with a non-human actor, construct its 'intentions' and dissect the 'art' it creates? Problematising the boundaries between art and nature, absence and presence, material transformation and ruin, this project proposes a redefinition of the relationship between historical catastrophes and the communities that experience them.